Published 4:00 am, Thursday, October 9, 1997

Based on early and unofficial data, the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 33.64 points at 8,061.42 following Wednesday's stiff sell-off of 83 points on Greenspan's comments. In the broader market, declining issues beat advances 17-11 on active volume of 553 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq market and the Russell 2000 index of smaller company stocks were flirting record highs after erasing their early losses.

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But most stock indexes recovered only partially from an opening slide that came as interest rates shot higher again in the bond market after hitting a 1-1/4-year low on Tuesday.

Bonds sank sharply twice during the morning, once after the German and French central banks boosted lending rates to protect against inflation in their countries, and again after a report showing more upward pressure on U.S. wages, the dominant force behind inflation.

The unsettling news came a day after Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, shook up investors by telling a congressional panel that the economic good times behind this bull market could falter.

The warning came as a surprise in the markets, where there's been little fear that the Fed might protect against inflation by slowing the economy with a boost in the central bank's key lending rates.

As bonds fell in the morning, the yield on the 30-year Treasury, another key influence on borrowing costs, rose as high as 6.46 percent before easing back this afternoon.

On Wednesday, the long-bond yield shot to 6.37 percent from late Tuesday's 6.23 percent, which was its lowest finish since February 1996. Bonds pay a fixed return that's more enticing if the inflation outlook is nonthreatening.

An hour before the close of trading, the Standard & Poor's 500 list was down 3.13 at 970.71, and the NYSE composite index was down 1.62 at 507.95.

But the Nasdaq composite index, which managed to scrape together a small gain on Wednesday, was up 5.28 at 1,747.05, working on its sixth straight closing record.

The Russell 2000 was up 0.34 at 464.00, enough to erase Wednesday's minuscule loss of 0.12 and put the index back in record terrain.

The American Stock Exchange composite index was down 1.00 at 717.30. The Russell 2000 and the Amex, which is dominated by smaller companies, had both closed at record highs for seven straight sessions before Wednesday.

The Dow's biggest decliners were Merck, down 1-1/8 at 100-5/8; 3M, down 13 / 16 at 9613 / 16 ; Alcoa, down 13 / 16 at 79; and Sears Roebuck, down 1 at 53-5/8.